My mom likes telling the story of the night she made a life changing decision. Her grandmother, see, was a worrier. One night old grandma worried so much, she nearly made herself sick. After that night, my mom decided she would never worry.

Which is why we frequently have conversations like this:

“I’m going to go on a cruise,” I say.

“Cruise ships are ripe with salmonella,” says my mother.

Or “I’d like to go on a hot air balloon ride.”

“Hot air balloons start on fire and then their baskets start on fire,” says my mother.

My favorite (keep in mind that my mother lives in Utah where there are not many rivers, and the rivers nearby are, at their deepest, two inches shallow): “Cars with automatic windows are risky because if you become completely submerged in water, you will not be able to roll the windows down. Trapped you will be.”

I think she would like me to point out that she now owns a car with automatic windows. And I would like to point out that she has not, as of yet, been stuck in it underwater.

My sister’s favorite: “Do not dig holes at the beach. A man suffocated to death when he dug a sand pit, got inside, and the sides fell down around him.”

Bless my mother who always prepared us for the worst-case scenario.

So now, after years of trying to plan a family cruise, I’ve come to grips with the fact that it will never happen. Because even though she would never worry about it, in light of the many recent cruise ship debacles, I’m sure another cruise conversation would go as follows:

“Let’s go on a family cruise,” I’d say.

“The engine will start on fire, and we’ll be drifting at sea aimlessly eating cold cuts which will give us salmonella,” would say my mother.

I love my mom. She’s always done her best to prepare me for every possible situation. The cool thing about her is that after she put in her two warnings, she stepped back and let me do whatever I wanted. Which is why, even to this day, you’ll never find me digging a sand pit. Thanks, Mom, for loving me so much.